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jenin
islamic jihad and israeli defecation
Occupation and Suicide: Meggido & the Legacy of Jenin
by Jennifer Loewenstein
http://electronicintifada.net
(Wisconsin, 6 June 2002) -- The last thing I saw when I left
the Jenin refugee camp this past April was a large black
flag placed triumphantly atop a heap of ruins at the camp's
entrance. It was the flag of Islamic Jihad. If there was any
sign that Sharon's military blitz into Jenin had been an
utter failure, this was it. All the might and ferocity of
the Israeli military machine cannot crush the Palestinian
uprising. On the contrary, it appears to be fueling the
most extreme factions within Palestinian society.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Thursday's
suicide bombing of a bus outside the Israeli town of
Meggido killing 17 people. The timing was intentional:
the 35th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank,
the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Sharon can blockade Arafat's compound in Ramallah; he
can order his troops to make house to house searches
in the cities and towns of the West Bank. His government
can tighten travel restrictions in the occupied territories
even further; it can strangulate the Palestinian economy
and leave its civil society in almost total disarray. It
can prevent the UN from carrying out an investigation of
what took place at Jenin and then spread lies about what
happened there.
But truth has a way of getting out in the most unexpected
ways. Jenin has become the most popular name for newborn
baby girls in Palestine. Their legacy will eventually
contribute to the demise of the current Israeli state.
Occupation will ultimately destroy the occupiers.
Dead bodies were laid out in the dirt outside the wrecked
hospital in the Jenin refugee camp where workers with
surgical masks over their faces waited to load them into
open-backed trucks. The smell of death was so overpowering
that children covered their faces with their shirts and
some of the journalists covered their mouths and noses
with strips of cloth torn from articles of their clothing.
A young man weeping uncontrollably into the arms of his
friend stood near the bodies, and an old woman shouted
through tears of rage "stop taking pictures". A man smeared
with blood from the bodies nearby led her away.
I counted twenty-four bodies. Emergency relief workers had
just brought some of them to the back of the hospital from
inside the devastated camp, though not all had yet been
recovered. Another group of men dug up more bodies from
makeshift graves in a nearby pit where some of the dead
had been buried temporarily during the siege. The Israeli
Army had prevented their families from giving them a proper
burial in the cemetery outside. It also prevented medical
relief and ambulances from entering the camp.
I interviewed the chief doctor at the Shifa Surgical
hospital in the city of Jenin and verified this information
with two other doctors and an ambulance driver. No, there
was no shortage of blood or oxygen in their hospital. Why?
Because these supplies were not allowed into Jenin to help
the wounded. In fact, when the ambulance drivers attempted
to go in anyway, IDF soldiers fired on them. Emergency food
aid was allowed in only after the IDF left. I spoke to
people from Save the Children and Medicins Sans Frontiers
whose outrage at the situation could barely be contained.
Walking through Jenin that day was nightmarish. What had
been a crowded refugee camp was now a wrecked, bulldozed
mass of destruction unlike anything I had ever seen or
even imagined. Between 13- and 14,000 people lost their
homes and all of their possessions during the indecently
named operation "Defensive Shield". Nothing is left in
the former Jenin camp except ruins. The interior of the
camp is a moonscape of rubble and dirt, flattened beyond
recognition.
A woman rummaging through a pile of concrete said she couldn't
even tell where her former home had been. The houses along
the perimeter of the camp are still standing like empty shells
in a semicircle facing the flattened interior. They have been
so completely destroyed inside that no one could again live
in them. Tank shells blew huge holes into the external walls;
gaping wounds offering an uninvited view into people's bedrooms,
kitchens, and the living rooms. Broken glass lay scattered across
the floors along with chunks of concrete that fell randomly from
the ceilings and staircases, many of which had holes in them from
missiles and tank shells. Soldiers had in some instances burned
family photographs.
In one house, flour for making bread had been dumped on the kitchen
floor along with all of the kitchenware. Soldiers had scribbled
offensive graffiti inside the walls of many of the homes: in one,
a Star of David with hateful words written in it covered part of
a living room wall; in another, a picture of the Dome of the Rock
being blown up defaced the wall behind a staircase. On a bathroom
door someone had scribbled in Hebrew "if you need to take a piss,
go upstairs" where a child's bedroom was. There was garbage strewn
everwhere inside the houses where soldiers had taken over. The IDF
had cut all electricity and water to the camp.
In some of the houses soldiers had defecated inside refrigerators
or kitchen pots and peed into the sinks. In the camp mosque the
loudspeaker from the minaret, from which a muezzin calls his
people to prayer, had been broken. Someone had defecated in it
as it lay on the floor.
Walking was unsafe in Jenin, whether you were outside picking
your way through blasted blocks of cement and wire, or inside
trying to step over destroyed furniture, scattered and torn
clothing, or broken household items. A television set had been
shot. The speakers of a stereo had bullets in them. Were these
appliances part of the "terrorist infrastructure"? I wondered.
I watched in horror as a small family shack at the edge of the
camp burst into flames after a loud explosion. A missile fired
from an American-made helicopter had not exploded when it landed
in the house three days previously. The family mercifully escaped,
but nothing remains of their belongings. Throughout the camp one
could find spent ammunition, used bullets, tank shells, the remnants
of missiles, and more the fingerprints of Israel's crime. Worse,
however, were those that were lying unexploded, half-hidden from
view, waiting for the unsuspecting child to stumble across them.
Do not tell me that this was a humanely carried out military
operation in defense of Israel. I was there. I spent two days
and a night in Jenin's ruins immediately after the Israelis
pulled out. I saw people desperately searching for remnants
of their former lives; heard people begging for information
about loved ones killed, missing, or taken away to prison;
listened to a story of how four men were summarily executed,
their hands tied behind their backs while they were made to
kneel outside at a wall. Soldiers fired bullets into the back
of their heads at close range. Different individuals repeated
this story to me at different times but with the same details.
I watched as children wandered aimlessly around the expanse of
debris with expressionless, traumatized faces. I smelled the
putrid smell of death coming from heaps of rubble where houses
had been blown up on top of their inhabitants. I still lack the
words that can fully express the horror of what I saw. Perhaps
my photographs will do a better job; they can at least partly
document what I have written here.
Do not tell me that Israel was defending itself from "militants,
terrorists, and gunmen" in Jenin. The Palestinians of Jenin were
defending their own homes on their own land, a land that has been
illegally occupied for 35 years. Israel has no legal or moral
right to be on that land. It has no legal or moral right to
murder people for opposing this occupation.
It has no legal or moral right to keep building Jewish settlements
on Palestiian land and to continue stealing the resources of this
land. It has no legal or moral right to continue depriving this
people of their basic humanity. But, for the record, the Palestinian
people do have the right, under international law, to resist this
barbaric occupation (UN General Assembly Resolution 42/159;
7 December 1987).
If Ariel Sharon and his government want the deadly and horrible
suicide bombings in Israel to stop; if indeed the Israeli
government truly cares about its own citizens lives and
security, it will end the occupation unilaterally today
and save its own future in the process. The choice is in
their hands.
-- from "Live from Palestine" diaries project
http://electronicintifada.net/diaries/archives/00000210.shtml
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